Tagged With lgbt rights

34 Anglican schools in NSW have written a joint letter to federal MPs asking them to protect exemptions that allow religious schools to legally discriminate against LGBTQIA+ students and teachers. The letter follows the introduction of a bill to protect students from discrimination, though protections for teachers are still being discussed. Here's what you need to know.

Discrimination occurs in the workplace when an employer takes adverse action against an employee or prospective employee because of a protected attribute such as sexual orientation.

That's almost verbatim from Australia's Fair Work Ombudsman's guidelines for all employees' right to protection from discrimination at work. Yet you still hear stories of Australians getting fired for being gay - or more accurately, being open about being gay. So is this actually legal in Australia? And if so, how?

You don't want to live in a place that doesn't respect you as a person. Destination Pride, built by PFLAG Canada and ad agency FCB/SIX, rates cities around the world based on the legal rights and protections they give to LGBTQ people. While it's packaged as a holiday rater, it's more useful when choosing where to stay long-term.

Dear Lifehacker, there's been a lot of coverage about the voting and enrolment deadlines for the Australian Marriage Law Postal Survey. However, I'm finding it difficult to get a release date for the results. When do we get to find out which way Australians voted? Is there going to be a huge wait like with the Census?

When my wife and I decided to become parents together, I was prepared to discuss our family with adults. As a queer woman, I've had to continually "come out" and explain who I am for years -- every new job or move has been a cause to tell new coworkers that I am not, in fact, heterosexual. What I was less prepared for was talking about my queer family with children. I thought it would be several years before I would need to explain my family to kids, and surely by that time, I'd be ready.

A 2014 study by the Human Rights Campaign found that 53 per cent of LGBT individuals remain closeted at work. According to Audrey Gallien, Director of Marketing for Catalyst, a workplace inclusion advocacy organisation, even when businesses attempt to provide an inclusive environment, individuals "still must face the inter-personal risk of 'bringing their full self' to work" -- in other words, they risk their relationship with their manager, team members, or clients changing for the worse.

Discussing LGBT rights in conservative religious communities can be particularly challenging, both for people who are newly out and for those of us who simply wish that everyone would just hurry up and get with the civil-rights program. One can feel that those who reject the rights of LGBT people on religious grounds are using dogma as a fig leaf to hide their bigotry, and in many cases that's probably true. But there remain a large number of people raised in religious traditions who nonetheless have changed their views on the place of LGBT people in the broader community -- and even in the narrower world of their church community.